ScreenCrush’s Comic Strip is a weekly roundup of the hottest superhero movie news items. From Marvel to DC and points in between, if it pertains to costumed comic-book heroes, we’re covering it here, bringing you our expert analysis. This week, Warner opens up the vaults on classic ‘Batman’ auditions, ‘Thor’ ramps up for its November release, and we dig up a tease of the ‘Captain America’ soundtrack, which sounds amazing.

‘Thor: The Dark World’

Marvel

It’s ‘Thor’ week on the Comic Strip. Advanced tickets for the upcoming sequel officially went on sale this morning. And tons of news items associated with Alan Taylor’s movie are due to arrive as the week continues … starting with Tuesday night’s sharing of an exclusive first look during ABC’s new program ‘Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’

That’s one way to ensure Marvel’s fanbase tunes in to the weekly program.

In preparation for the new footage, Marvel dropped this ‘Dark World’ TV spot:

If you were in San Diego for Comic-Con, you saw a controversial end to the ‘Thor’ footage Marvel showed in Hall H. But while it suggests big problems for our hero, Tom Hiddleston cautioned in an interview with IGN:

I would say be very careful with your suppositions. People are so quick to jump. That’s what I love about playing the character. People are so quick to draw conclusions about who he is. The whole thing about Loki is that he’s dancing on this liminal line between redemption and destruction. Just be very careful about drawing conclusions based on what you see.

- Meanwhile, if you want to know more about ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ as it makes its way to your television screen, enjoy this behind-the-scenes featurette, which aired on ABC News and includes a tour of the set:

‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’

Marvel

This is a great read. USA Today interviewed Ed Brubaker, the comic-book artist responsible for the 'Winter Soldier' storyline in 'Captain America' books. He read the script of the upcoming Cap sequel, and had this to say:

I read the script and I was really blown away by it. The tone of it and the Bucky stuff is so perfect and the way I'd want it to be, I was so thrilled to see that. But to me the biggest thing, too, is it's the first time Marvel has put out a movie where there's a specific book the title of the movie relates to. And now they're doing that with ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron.’

They're putting out a hardcover collection of Captain America: Winter Soldier and that's because that movie is coming out. That is the first time Marvel has one specific book to point people to, as opposed to when X-Men: First Class came out and there's 15 trade paperbacks and people who see the movie don't know which one to pick up. So it's exciting, as the guy who gets royalties for that book.”

Funny. But true. It is a business. But we’re hopeful that ‘Captain America 2' gets the Winter Soldier right, because Bucky can be a thorn in Cap’s side for years to come if they lay the groundwork here.

‘Batman vs. Superman’

When it comes to the Caped Crusader, we should be looking forward to the future pairing of Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill, not backward to the previous work forged by Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale. And yet, when something so cool rolls around, it’s hard not to want to share it with you, dear Comic Strip readers.

As part of the upcoming Ultimate Collector’s Edition Blu-ray set for Nolan’s ‘Dark Knight’ trilogy, an audition clip has been making the rounds of Bale doing ‘Batman Begins’ lines opposite Amy Adams. Have you seen this yet?

And while video isn't available for these, the set also includes audition and makeup tests for Tom Hardy’s Bane, Aaron Eckhart’s Two-Face and Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman. Very cool stuff, courtesy of Batman-News:

Warner Bros.

‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’

Bryan Singer has been quiet on Twitter lately, after an active social media sprint during production of ‘Days of Future Past.’ But the director broke radio silence over the weekend with this photo of Professor Xavier’s sign in disarray:

Bryan Singer's Twitter

What do we think that we’re seeing? The grass around the mansion is overgrown. The sign on the front gate has fallen, so this likely takes place in the “future” section of the film, when Charles (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) have to recruit Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) to travel through time and set right a series of wrongs that likely lead to the tumbling of the sign.

Singer says he’s “back in the cutting room,” slicing and dicing his movie into screening shape, and getting ready for a May 23, 2014 release date.

‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’

We continue to hear that the first trailer for Marc Webb’s ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ will be attached to ‘Thor’ on November 8. As part of a countdown to the trailer, ComicBookMovie will run a series of fan-made video teasers starting with this one:

Looking for more Spidey news? Check out this interview with ‘ASM 2’ co-screenwriter Alex Kurtzman, who addresses all the open-ended questions raised by the first Spider-Man movie. How will he and co-writer Bob Orci tackle them?

Part of what we were drawn to and intrigued by was wanting to know the answers to a lot of those questions. So the villains emerge from the a lot of unanswered questions at the end of that movie and none of them are random at all … they are all tied together by a theme, an idea, and I think they come from our curiosity about what was going on in the life of Peter Parker and his parents.

Hopefully more of those questions will be answered with the sequel, opening on May 2, 2014.